Goals for the Third Quarter of 2015

Monday, July 06, 2015

Earlier this year I set goals for the first three months of 2015. I didn't do a fantastic job of completing those goals, but making the goals helped to give me a focus and helped me to be more mindful of my time. I didn't share my goals for the 2nd quarter because I was too busy celebrating my new-found freedom. It's time to get back on track!

1 | Make my office less depressing.

I'm am one of the fortunate few who works from home doing something I actually really enjoy. The only downside right now is that I've been staring at tan colored walls for the past year. Turns out I find tan a slightly depressing color.

My office is the fraternal twin of little e's room and will someday become another child's room. I'm thinking about using the rest of the gray I used in little e's room for below the chair-rail and finding a mint green for above the chair-rail. I'm also thinking about having polka dots make an appearance again. Maybe this time in silver?

2 | Stay on top of finances.

Have you heard of YNAB? It's a software that works to change the way you think about your money by assigning only the money you currently have a job to do. We've only been using it for a few weeks, but I'm really loving it. It's helping us to be much more aware of where our money is going. If you are currently enrolled in school then you can use the full software completely free, each year you are enrolled. Luckily, I was enrolled at the start of the year so we have it up until 2016. I'm really hoping that this will help us maximize the amount we save each month.

3 | Keep practicing Spanish.

I took four years of Spanish in high school and remembered hating conjugating, but actual vocab? Not so much. It seems that being fairly fluent in Spanish will be helpful for my future career goals so I'm practicing daily via Duolingo / listening in to the conversations of others. I would like to continue to practice on the daily.

4 | Keep working on my cookbook.

I've decided to start collecting those recipes that my family rates an 8 or higher on a 10 point scale. Eventually I'm hoping to put this collection together into a personal cookbook that I can use to make monthly meal plans. Right now we're working through this cookbook. We got it for our wedding a few years ago, so we may as well put it to use, right?

5 | Make fitness a priority.

I broke my motto, "I only run when being chased," this month and ended up messing up my knee big time. I think this is a pretty good indication that my current workout plan isn't quite working. I need to spend some more time on strength and I need to be much more consistent.